By Victoria Braithwaite - The LA
TimesVICTORIA BRAITHWAITE, a behavioral biologist at Edinburgh
University, is on sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Berlin.

Research challenges the myth among
anglers that fish can't feel pain from barbed hooks.

October 8, 2006

EVERY YEAR, sportsmen around the world drag millions
of fish to shore on barbed hooks. It's something people have always
done, and with little enough conscience. Fish are . well, fish. They're
not dogs, who yelp when you accidentally step on their feet. Fish don't
cry out or look sad or respond in a particularly recognizable way. So we
feel free to treat them in a way that we would not treat mammals or even
birds.

But is there really any biological justification for
exempting fish from the standards nowadays accorded to so-called higher
animals? Do we really know whether fish feel pain or whether they suffer
- or whether, in fact, our gut sense that they are dumb, unfeeling
animals is accurate?

Determining whether any type of animal really suffers
is difficult. A good starting place might be to consider how people feel
pain. When a sharp object pierces the human body, specialized nerve
endings called nociceptors alert us to the damage. Incredibly, no one
ever seems to have asked before whether fish have nociceptors around
their mouths. My colleagues and I in Edinburgh, Scotland, recently
looked in trout and found that they do. If you look at thin sections of
the trigeminal nerve, the main nerve for the face for all vertebrates,
fish have the same two types of nociceptors that we do - A-delta and C
fibers. So they do have the necessary sensory wiring to detect pain.

And the wiring works. We stimulated the nociceptors by
injecting diluted vinegar or bee venom just under the skin of the trout.
If you've ever felt the nip of vinegar on an open cut or the sting of a
bee, you will recognize these feelings as painful. Well, fish find these
naturally irritating chemicals unpleasant too. Their gills beat faster,
and they rub the affected area on the walls of their tank, lose interest
in food and have problems making decisions.

When I have a headache, I reach for the aspirin. What
happens if we give the fish painkillers after injecting the noxious
substances? Remarkably, they begin to behave normally again. So their
adverse behavior is induced by the experience of pain.

But just because fish are affected by pain, does that
mean they actually feel it? To answer that, we need to probe deeper into
their brains (and our own) to understand what it means to feel pain.

To determine what fish go through mentally when they
experience painful stimuli, we also need to determine whether they have
a capacity to feel emotion and to suffer.

This is a much harder problem. It goes to the very
heart of one of the biggest unresolved issues in biology: Do nonhuman
animals have emotions and feelings? Are nonhuman animals conscious?

Scientists and philosophers have long debated
consciousness and what it is and whether it is exclusively human. There
are multiple definitions and, frankly, we haven't really come to grips
with what it means to be conscious ourselves. Are we conscious because
we are capable of attributing mental states to others, or perhaps
because we have a qualitative awareness of feelings, whether positive or
negative? And if we can't define our own consciousness, can we expect to
detect it in fish?

Perhaps not, but we can look for behaviors and
abilities that we believe contribute to human consciousness - for
example, complex cognitive abilities and specialized brain regions that
process emotion and memory.

It turns out that the stereotype of fish as slow,
dim-witted creatures is wrong; many fish are remarkably clever. For
example, they can learn geometrical relationships and landmarks - and
then use these to generate a mental map to plan escape routes if a
predator shows up.

And their brains are not as different from ours as we
once thought. Although less anatomically complex than our own brain, the
function of two of their forebrain areas is very similar to the
mammalian amygdala and hippocampus - areas associated with emotion,
learning and memory. If these regions are damaged in fish, their
learning and emotional capacities are impaired; they can no longer find
their way through mazes, and they lose their sense of fear.

None of this tells us that fish are conscious, but it
does demonstrate them to be cognitively competent: They are more than
simple automata.

So do we have to change the way we treat fish? Some
still argue that fish brains are so less well developed than those of
birds and mammals that it isn't possible for fish to suffer. In my view,
that case is not proven.

Moreover, we actually have as much evidence that fish
can suffer as we do that chickens can. I think, therefore, that we
should adopt a precautionary ethical approach and assume that in the
absence of evidence to the contrary, fish suffer.

Of course, this doesn't mean that we necessarily must
change our behavior. One could reasonably adopt a utilitarian
cost-benefit approach and argue that the benefits of sport fishing, both
financial and recreational, may outweigh the ethical costs of the likely
suffering of fish.

But I do find it curious that it has taken us so long
even to bother to ask whether fish feel pain. Perhaps no one really
wanted to know. Perhaps it opens a can of worms - so to speak - and begs
the question of where do we draw the line. Crustacean welfare? Slug
welfare? And if not fish, why birds? Is there a biological basis for
drawing a line?

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God's Creatures Ministry is committed to spreading God's
compassion to all He has made based on The Scriptures. Although we are a
Christian Ministry, we encourage all to have their own animal welfare committee
in their community. We extend our resources to those who would like to learn
more or begin their own God's Creatures Ministry as an extension of us. God
created us to have a vegetarian diet and commissioned us to protect His animals.
Instead, we have exploited them for our entertainment, fashion, appetite and
useless, torturous research. These creatures have the right to live as they were
created to live. Because we live IN this world, but are not OF this world, we
strive to bring God's mercy and justice to all. We live in God's Kingdom now
where Jesus, The Sacrificial Lamb, The Prince of Peace, The Lion of Judah
reigns. We look forward to that day when all of creation will be 'set free from
slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God'
(Romans 8:21) where a little child will lead and guide God's creatures (see
Isaiah 11:5-9).